Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The date, March 29. was chosen because the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) was disbanded on this day in 1973 and the last U.S. combat troops left the chaos and devastation that was Vietnam. On March 28, 2017, President Trump signed the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 officially recognizing the day. The Act also states that the US flag should especially be displayed in their honor.
Vietnam has left a huge footprint on American society. Our involvement began in 1955. Over 2,7 million men and women served served in Vietnam over the next eighteen years. The average age of a soldier was nineteen. One-third of them had been drafted. One-third of the draftees would be killed in the conflict. After spending one trillion dollars in today's economy the US for the first time in its history would return home without achieving its military objective.
In 1968 I had not yet formed a strong opposition to our nation's war against communist influence in Vietnam. My focus that summer targeted a new and narrow direction in behavioral studies involving geography, cartography and psychology. By early 1969 with no end in sight for what appeared to be a hopeless and seemingly endless struggle many friends immersed themselves in opposition to the war. I watched from the sidelines until my closest friend, a promising mathematician, elected to leave the country rather than face the increasingly troubling national crisis unfolding on the home front.
The day before he left he asked if I could drive him to his family home in the idyllic farm country near Emmitsburg, Maryland. He wanted to say "good-bye" to his family. For an hour I sat alone and still in an overstuffed chair in a comfortable, dimly lit parlor straight out of 1910. I heard them talking quietly in the distance. Sometimes I still hear them. On the return to Washington not a word was shared between us. It remains one of my strangest and darkest days. It was also the last day of my support for a military solution in Vietnam. The following day, Dave and his girlfriend left for Canada. I never heard from them again.
To the best of my knowledge, all but one of my classmates and friends who served in Vietnam survived. They returned to a conflicted nation that wanted so hard to forget the war that they often forgot the soldier. It's taken all of us a long time to correct that oversight. The average age of a Vietnam veteran is 68. It's well beyond time to thank them, to talk to their family members, and to donate to organizations that support them.
Today I look back on those memories of military parades, memorial activities of my childhood, and a career infused with military history from the colonial wars through Vietnam. I'll never experience how military service shapes a person inside but I know the cost of freedom is not free. Every Vietnam veteran has paid a price that enables us to enjoy life in this bountiful nation. I offer up to all of them my sincerest admiration and thanks on this, their day.
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